If you want it EASY, you want GAMES then either USE WINDOWS or buy an X-Box. If you prefer Linux and are willing to expend the time and energy (and reap the rewards of what you learn) then USE LINUX
You mean keep doing what the mass majority of gamers have been doing for years? Its that kind of attitude why Linux is so heavily shunned by casual gamers. Most people are not willing to expend the time and energy and reap the rewards of what you learn just to get UT2004 running in Linux when they can use the auto-installing and play it on Windows. People want EASY. People don't like having to change their video settings everytime they want to play a certain game.
The masses don't like to get told, 'you should learn our complex and difficult methods to achieve the same results using your simplicitic and traditional ways.' Its like telling the American people that the electorial college is inferior (and in a way it is) but even if its true, people aren't going to go along with it for the sake of ease. (Do you REALLY want to spend the time and effort necessary to constantly remain updated and educated on what goes on in the government while having a job/family/school/social life/playing video games/reading Slashdot/etc.?)
Bashing Steam is popular because they keep saying its for the good for developers and gamers by cutting out the publishers yet they've failed in every respect.
They charged the same price as the boxed version, the first no-no. Secondly, the whole 'pre-caching' of Half-Life 2 on your computer was excuted HORRIBLY given the fact that the servers outright crashed from some, horribly affected gameplay on other games on Steam or Steam simply froze up for others. Third, if the pre-caching of Half-Life 2 was a stress test for Steam, considering its results, Half-Life 2 never should have been released over Steam without some major overhauls within the system (not to mention the Half-Life 2 launch problems).
I'll support the idea of Steam when they admit and face their problems rather than trying to cover it up with hype.
This is offtopic but Link in the Zelda games hasn't exactly been immune to failure either.
Zelda : Link to the Past for the SNES/GBA, he fails to save Zelda from being sent to the dark world and the priest whos supposed to help her hide gets killed. Zelda : Ocarina of Time for the N64, he pulls the Master Sword out about 10 years too early and plunges the world (at least Hyrule) into a post-apocalypse place and only managed to fix things thanks to time travel. Zelda : Majora's Mask, this time he screws up even before the game begins losing Epona, his ocarina and then getting transformed into a Deku kid. Zelda : Wind Waker, his sister gets kidnapped, he manages to lose his sword about 15 minutes after getting it after getting shot at a stone wall from a cannon, he lets Zelda get kidnapped and then he leads Ganondorf to the sunken Castle of Hyrule.
Admittedly most of this is just to move the plot along, but jeez! How many times can you let the princess/his sister get kidnapped? Time travel? Please, thats probably the least original theme to be used in a video game. And why does he keep 'accidentally' helping the Ganondorf one way or another? Doesn't he have any friends he can count on to hide Zelda?
99% of people : Bungie? Who the hell is that? 1% Bungie! Marathon!
Post-Halo:
99% of people : Bungie? Halo! 1% Bungie? Those sell-outs!
Go look at what was cutout again
on
Halo 2.5 for Xbox 2
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Some of the stuff that was thankfully cut out and was pointed out in the collector's DVD were pretty damned stupid. Here are some not-so-brilliant ideas that were cut:
A seperate race just to use the covenant sniper rifle? Uh, no. Theres already 5 races (6 if you count the prophets) in Halo 2 and Jackals piss me off as it is with the sniper rifle. A 1 man warthog vehicle? Pretty but the only reason why the Ghost gets away with being a solo vehicle is because it can strafe. A flamethrower? Fun but how are you going to fit that in? Most maps in Halo PC don't even put in the flamethrower, let alone the players.
Halo 2 is a very tight knit, carefully designed game compared to most other FPSs on the market. Who the hell uses the pistol or machine gun in Doom 3 when you have the chaingun? Why use gravity gun when you have the rocket launcher or crossbow in Half-Life 2? Why use the knife when you can get the sniper rifle or the shotgun in Far Cry? In Halo 2 the pistol still has some use as a last resort weapon (a SMG + pistol is considered to be the best close range method of attack after the shotgun).
What the fuck was that editorialil comment supposed to mean anyway?
It means it depends on how, when and what methods you use to gather your evidence. If I assumed all spam written and sent in English was originated from the U.S., then yeah the U.S. is the biggest spammer. But if you wanna get deep and complex you can look at when certain spam flows originate (last February I got a bunch of spam for the Chinese New Year and I doubt most U.S. spammers would know let alone target that). Or you look at where the original spam programs are first created (which seems to be India and China thanks to their huge populations and growing skills at computers.)
I'm a fairly average gamer [...] At the moment I've got a level 21 and a level 39 character.
I don't have any statistics but I'm pretty sure the 'average gamer' does not level up 2 characters at the same time, beyond short-term role playing purposes. I'm sure there are 'average' players who are level 60, you just don't hear about them due to the way video games are tiered, especially MMORPGs. The few elites (or high level players) will generally gather and stick by themselves while the masses (lower levelers) will generally fail to organize and significant gatherings. If you look online, clan/guild websites are quite developed far enough to rival small businesses. I've seen clan/guild websites with rosters, rules and regulations, a clear hierarchy or chain-of-command, and even requiring all members to nominate and vote for new people to be accepted in.
Considering a CD key generator simply creates a CD key that is legitimate as far as client-side can tell, theres no way to tell if someone, somewhere, somehow managed to get the same CD key as you through a CD-key gen. By the time you do, well in a case like this :
Valve : F*** you, you're banned, thx for the $$, now get lost.
Not to nitpick but given the PC market these past few months, saying that UO's expansion hit the top 20 in sales isn't say much. Other than the obvious games (Doom 3, HL2, FarCry, Rome Total War...) how many other games recieved major attention? Additionally, a top -20-? This isn't the Fortune 500 where 500th place is still a multimillion dollar company. I've seen top 20 lists where the top three sell millions and the last few sell a couple thousand. A top 10 or 5 would be much more impressive.
Indeed, most MMORPGs cause their own inflation when there are certain ways to introduce 'new money' into the economy. FFXI is a huge offender of this, recently it was possible for players to sell fish to NPCs for up to 2000 gil (FFXI currency) each. To put this into perspective, for a level 1 player with no help with full knowledge of the game and quests beforehand, it would take him about 1 1/2 to 2 hours doing quests, killing monsters and selling things to make that much money. Considering that, which method do you think is/was (SE recently made attempts to curb mass sales of fish to NPCs) going to attract the most players into making money? Fishing of course. Multiple that by hundreds and you've got millions of dollars being introduced into the system daily. End result : FFXI forums report prices on some items varying up to 200% from server to server.
Tempered with a family and the normal social/familial interaction most kids have, and a parent explaining to them that such movies are 'bad' and not to be emulated, such movies do not produce homicidal maniacs.
True, but you have to keep in mind that you're acting under the assumption that parents actively and often engage in teaching their children in moral lessons. How often do you see an underage kid being able to sneak into a R-rated movie and then getting told by his parents that such movies are 'bad' and not be emulated? Better yet, what kind of underage kid gets seperated from their parents, sneaks off ANYWHERE and gets told by their parents to always stay with them? Parents are not infallable and neither are children. MOVIES alone do not cause maniacs, you are most likely true, but PARENTS alone do not PREVENT maniacs.
Considering Sega was THE company for sports games back in the Genesis days and they didn't try to take out EA, your argument doesn't hold much water. This isn't a large corp vs large corp argument. Sega isn't the heavyweight it used to be, this is more of a formerly large corp vs THE corp.
The difference is the clear evidence that other things can be harmful for children, while video games have not been proven (at least not yet) to cause children to become violent.
You show a kid movies like Rambo, the Godfather, or Scarface, hes gonna grow up to be violent. Monkey see, monkey do. We've have scientific evidence proving this.
On the other hand you give a kid the controller to a game like GTA:SA what evidence is there that the kid is going to grow up to be a violent, gun-toting, car stealing gangster? For all we know the kid might even grow up to be an upright citizen in fear of having police officers beating him to death for getting into a fistfight on the street.
HL2 simply hasn't delieved yet. Oh wow gravity gun and physics? Goodie, now how about something besides deathmatch on 2 maps that aren't designed for less than 8 players? Unless you played on a private server, messing around by stacking things to block doorways or to make towers was just a waste of time since people would just tear it down. Guns? Nothing new either. The AI in HL2 is awful, I don't know where you get the idea that the HL2 AI is better considering they don't even try to get out of the way when an airboat is speeding at them at 90 miles per hour. In comparison, Halo 2's AI will hijack your ride if you're careless (I've seen them do it on Normal so your not looking very hard if you don't see them do it on Heroic or Legendary.)
Except for the fact that you leave yourself with a stupid, undeveloped main character like every other marine. If its done the way you set it up (Doom 2 > Doom 1 > Doom 3) then still end up asking yourself questions 1, 3 and 4. On top of that, if a second movie ISN'T made then it turns out just the way people are complaining about here : a no-backstory horror/zombie/monster flick with weak characters and a horrible plot.
Its not a very fair comparison with EA's "Return to Britannia" program. A two week trial system with a MMORPG is pretty much 'getting your toes wet' considering how much content a MMORPG game has (even one as old as UO). A one year trial system however is 'jump in, swim around, get attached to the game, and then be willing to pay for more once the one year limit rolls around... assuming you're still here... and you didn't buy the expansions... and you didn't ready subscribe.'
Roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of Doom 2 took place on Earth, but Doom 2 makes absolutely no sense without Doom 1. In Doom 1, you find the root of the problem and enter it (episode 1.) Episode 2, you find the experiment gone wrong, you kill the guard at the portal (the cyberdemon) and enter the portal into hell (cue episode 3). You fight through Hell, you kill the 'General/Commander' of the forces of Hell and go through the same portal being used to invade Earth in order to get home. You get home, but find Earth overrun. Cue Doom 2.
Without all that Doom 2 makes almost no sense. A movie goer with no Doom 1 info would end up asking himself this:
1. Who is this guy? (Hes a marine who got shipped to Mars for striking his superior officer.) 2. Where/how did demons get to Earth? (see Doom 1.) 3. Why is he so badass and everyone else fell to the demons? (Because he's been through hell and back, hes prepared, he has the element of surprise, hes skilled and hes nothing less of a 'veteran' against demons at this point.) 4. If hes so good, why aren't the other Marines so good (see Doom 1, originally he got left behind so he was more 'shoot now, figure out when they're all dead' and not 'lets figure this thing out peacefully before filling it full of holes.'
Japanese companies generally get away with limited releases in beta quality because they usually release things that can be easily upgraded (read : software), are generally hush-hush (whens the last time you heard of a limited cellphone beta release?) or so limited that they can keep track of each and every item released (closed beta games sometimes do this by matching individuals with unique IDs, binding EULAs or even 'watermarking' each copy differently).
In a standard case of Japanese 'beta testing', chances are people outside Japan wouldn't hear of this, you would KNOW its a sorry piece of crap that needs testing and you would probably get stopped by customs if you took it outside the country (odd looking electronic device, with a unique ID code, from a company which has not yet -officially- released anything of the like : probably stolen with no further information). In the case of the PSP however, you have people outside Japanese screaming for it, you EXPECT it to be tested and prepared for your hands and you would expect importers to be stocking the stuff, not reporting problems with it.
Actually Sony doesn't even recognize these problems yet. Any kind of announcement regarding a product this big (I've seen news reports calling it the "Gameboy-killer") would've been reported by someone pretty damned quickly.
I know. Unrealistic hippie talk. Lay off the crack pipe. Blah blah blah...
Actually, I would say "This is already happening, look at the machinima scene. Three words : Red Vs. Blue." People are already looking away, just not enough... yet.
Says who? EA Sports (for the most part) has a monopoly over the sports video game industry. What are you gonna do if you wanna play a sports game but don't wanna support EA? Don't buy it? Fine but this is Slashdot, we're not exactly in the millions of people watching the Super Bowl demographics.
True, but I was talking about historically. If you go back into the past, the U.S. has been one of the most annoying countries in history for third world countries. As for present day, well. Theres always parts of Africa who blaim the U.S. for the U.N.'s lack of activity, the Middle East has always hated us for some reason, the Cold War is still burning treasury coffers across the world, Europe hasn't liked us since the end of WWII, somethings always going on in South America with the U.S. getting blaimed for, Mexico just has economic issues with the U.S., and Native Americans haven't liked us since we first came here.
Generally, game companies such as Blizzard have to do this sort of tracking down themselves beyond sending eBay an e-mail telling them to bring the auction down. From selling to buying you'll go through no less than 4 step.
1. Auction site/Trading site/College bulletin board (take your pick) 2. Adverisement/Referal (its underground now, so expect to do some research to find it) 3. Paypal/bank/credit card (or equal, gotta have the money trail or its all hot air) 4. Connecting the auctioner's information with the buyer's and seller's WoW accounts. (Gotta know who to ban)
Take all this, web proxys, fake e-mail addresses, companies that are usually outside of the U.S., very little information, and the fact that you can't monitor this stuff in game (is XYZ players trading legit or did they buy it with real money?) makes this a very complicated business. Chances are the only reason why Blizzard is so successful right now is because its early, its fairly obvious and its learning from the mistakes of other games. Give it a few months and Blizzard is gonna start missing a lot of these guys or hitting the wrong people.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean keep doing what the mass majority of gamers have been doing for years? Its that kind of attitude why Linux is so heavily shunned by casual gamers. Most people are not willing to expend the time and energy and reap the rewards of what you learn just to get UT2004 running in Linux when they can use the auto-installing and play it on Windows. People want EASY. People don't like having to change their video settings everytime they want to play a certain game.
The masses don't like to get told, 'you should learn our complex and difficult methods to achieve the same results using your simplicitic and traditional ways.' Its like telling the American people that the electorial college is inferior (and in a way it is) but even if its true, people aren't going to go along with it for the sake of ease. (Do you REALLY want to spend the time and effort necessary to constantly remain updated and educated on what goes on in the government while having a job/family/school/social life/playing video games/reading Slashdot/etc.?)
They charged the same price as the boxed version, the first no-no. Secondly, the whole 'pre-caching' of Half-Life 2 on your computer was excuted HORRIBLY given the fact that the servers outright crashed from some, horribly affected gameplay on other games on Steam or Steam simply froze up for others. Third, if the pre-caching of Half-Life 2 was a stress test for Steam, considering its results, Half-Life 2 never should have been released over Steam without some major overhauls within the system (not to mention the Half-Life 2 launch problems).
I'll support the idea of Steam when they admit and face their problems rather than trying to cover it up with hype.
Zelda : Link to the Past for the SNES/GBA, he fails to save Zelda from being sent to the dark world and the priest whos supposed to help her hide gets killed.
Zelda : Ocarina of Time for the N64, he pulls the Master Sword out about 10 years too early and plunges the world (at least Hyrule) into a post-apocalypse place and only managed to fix things thanks to time travel.
Zelda : Majora's Mask, this time he screws up even before the game begins losing Epona, his ocarina and then getting transformed into a Deku kid.
Zelda : Wind Waker, his sister gets kidnapped, he manages to lose his sword about 15 minutes after getting it after getting shot at a stone wall from a cannon, he lets Zelda get kidnapped and then he leads Ganondorf to the sunken Castle of Hyrule.
Admittedly most of this is just to move the plot along, but jeez! How many times can you let the princess/his sister get kidnapped? Time travel? Please, thats probably the least original theme to be used in a video game. And why does he keep 'accidentally' helping the Ganondorf one way or another? Doesn't he have any friends he can count on to hide Zelda?
99% of people : Bungie? Who the hell is that?
1% Bungie! Marathon!
Post-Halo :
99% of people : Bungie? Halo!
1% Bungie? Those sell-outs!
A seperate race just to use the covenant sniper rifle? Uh, no. Theres already 5 races (6 if you count the prophets) in Halo 2 and Jackals piss me off as it is with the sniper rifle.
A 1 man warthog vehicle? Pretty but the only reason why the Ghost gets away with being a solo vehicle is because it can strafe.
A flamethrower? Fun but how are you going to fit that in? Most maps in Halo PC don't even put in the flamethrower, let alone the players.
Halo 2 is a very tight knit, carefully designed game compared to most other FPSs on the market. Who the hell uses the pistol or machine gun in Doom 3 when you have the chaingun? Why use gravity gun when you have the rocket launcher or crossbow in Half-Life 2? Why use the knife when you can get the sniper rifle or the shotgun in Far Cry? In Halo 2 the pistol still has some use as a last resort weapon (a SMG + pistol is considered to be the best close range method of attack after the shotgun).
It means it depends on how, when and what methods you use to gather your evidence. If I assumed all spam written and sent in English was originated from the U.S., then yeah the U.S. is the biggest spammer. But if you wanna get deep and complex you can look at when certain spam flows originate (last February I got a bunch of spam for the Chinese New Year and I doubt most U.S. spammers would know let alone target that). Or you look at where the original spam programs are first created (which seems to be India and China thanks to their huge populations and growing skills at computers.)
I don't have any statistics but I'm pretty sure the 'average gamer' does not level up 2 characters at the same time, beyond short-term role playing purposes. I'm sure there are 'average' players who are level 60, you just don't hear about them due to the way video games are tiered, especially MMORPGs. The few elites (or high level players) will generally gather and stick by themselves while the masses (lower levelers) will generally fail to organize and significant gatherings. If you look online, clan/guild websites are quite developed far enough to rival small businesses. I've seen clan/guild websites with rosters, rules and regulations, a clear hierarchy or chain-of-command, and even requiring all members to nominate and vote for new people to be accepted in.
Valve : F*** you, you're banned, thx for the $$, now get lost.
What defect are you talking about? This is a hidden feature!
Not to nitpick but given the PC market these past few months, saying that UO's expansion hit the top 20 in sales isn't say much. Other than the obvious games (Doom 3, HL2, FarCry, Rome Total War...) how many other games recieved major attention? Additionally, a top -20-? This isn't the Fortune 500 where 500th place is still a multimillion dollar company. I've seen top 20 lists where the top three sell millions and the last few sell a couple thousand. A top 10 or 5 would be much more impressive.
Maybe paint the PSP discs to look like ninja stars and shoot them at your friends/enemies?
Indeed, most MMORPGs cause their own inflation when there are certain ways to introduce 'new money' into the economy. FFXI is a huge offender of this, recently it was possible for players to sell fish to NPCs for up to 2000 gil (FFXI currency) each. To put this into perspective, for a level 1 player with no help with full knowledge of the game and quests beforehand, it would take him about 1 1/2 to 2 hours doing quests, killing monsters and selling things to make that much money. Considering that, which method do you think is/was (SE recently made attempts to curb mass sales of fish to NPCs) going to attract the most players into making money? Fishing of course. Multiple that by hundreds and you've got millions of dollars being introduced into the system daily. End result : FFXI forums report prices on some items varying up to 200% from server to server.
True, but you have to keep in mind that you're acting under the assumption that parents actively and often engage in teaching their children in moral lessons. How often do you see an underage kid being able to sneak into a R-rated movie and then getting told by his parents that such movies are 'bad' and not be emulated? Better yet, what kind of underage kid gets seperated from their parents, sneaks off ANYWHERE and gets told by their parents to always stay with them? Parents are not infallable and neither are children. MOVIES alone do not cause maniacs, you are most likely true, but PARENTS alone do not PREVENT maniacs.
Considering Sega was THE company for sports games back in the Genesis days and they didn't try to take out EA, your argument doesn't hold much water. This isn't a large corp vs large corp argument. Sega isn't the heavyweight it used to be, this is more of a formerly large corp vs THE corp.
You show a kid movies like Rambo, the Godfather, or Scarface, hes gonna grow up to be violent. Monkey see, monkey do. We've have scientific evidence proving this.
On the other hand you give a kid the controller to a game like GTA:SA what evidence is there that the kid is going to grow up to be a violent, gun-toting, car stealing gangster? For all we know the kid might even grow up to be an upright citizen in fear of having police officers beating him to death for getting into a fistfight on the street.
HL2 simply hasn't delieved yet. Oh wow gravity gun and physics? Goodie, now how about something besides deathmatch on 2 maps that aren't designed for less than 8 players? Unless you played on a private server, messing around by stacking things to block doorways or to make towers was just a waste of time since people would just tear it down. Guns? Nothing new either. The AI in HL2 is awful, I don't know where you get the idea that the HL2 AI is better considering they don't even try to get out of the way when an airboat is speeding at them at 90 miles per hour. In comparison, Halo 2's AI will hijack your ride if you're careless (I've seen them do it on Normal so your not looking very hard if you don't see them do it on Heroic or Legendary.)
Except for the fact that you leave yourself with a stupid, undeveloped main character like every other marine. If its done the way you set it up (Doom 2 > Doom 1 > Doom 3) then still end up asking yourself questions 1, 3 and 4. On top of that, if a second movie ISN'T made then it turns out just the way people are complaining about here : a no-backstory horror/zombie/monster flick with weak characters and a horrible plot.
Its not a very fair comparison with EA's "Return to Britannia" program. A two week trial system with a MMORPG is pretty much 'getting your toes wet' considering how much content a MMORPG game has (even one as old as UO). A one year trial system however is 'jump in, swim around, get attached to the game, and then be willing to pay for more once the one year limit rolls around... assuming you're still here... and you didn't buy the expansions... and you didn't ready subscribe.'
Without all that Doom 2 makes almost no sense. A movie goer with no Doom 1 info would end up asking himself this :
1. Who is this guy? (Hes a marine who got shipped to Mars for striking his superior officer.)
2. Where/how did demons get to Earth? (see Doom 1.)
3. Why is he so badass and everyone else fell to the demons? (Because he's been through hell and back, hes prepared, he has the element of surprise, hes skilled and hes nothing less of a 'veteran' against demons at this point.)
4. If hes so good, why aren't the other Marines so good (see Doom 1, originally he got left behind so he was more 'shoot now, figure out when they're all dead' and not 'lets figure this thing out peacefully before filling it full of holes.'
In a standard case of Japanese 'beta testing', chances are people outside Japan wouldn't hear of this, you would KNOW its a sorry piece of crap that needs testing and you would probably get stopped by customs if you took it outside the country (odd looking electronic device, with a unique ID code, from a company which has not yet -officially- released anything of the like : probably stolen with no further information). In the case of the PSP however, you have people outside Japanese screaming for it, you EXPECT it to be tested and prepared for your hands and you would expect importers to be stocking the stuff, not reporting problems with it.
Actually Sony doesn't even recognize these problems yet. Any kind of announcement regarding a product this big (I've seen news reports calling it the "Gameboy-killer") would've been reported by someone pretty damned quickly.
I know. Unrealistic hippie talk. Lay off the crack pipe. Blah blah blah...
Actually, I would say "This is already happening, look at the machinima scene. Three words : Red Vs. Blue." People are already looking away, just not enough... yet.
Says who? EA Sports (for the most part) has a monopoly over the sports video game industry. What are you gonna do if you wanna play a sports game but don't wanna support EA? Don't buy it? Fine but this is Slashdot, we're not exactly in the millions of people watching the Super Bowl demographics.
True, but I was talking about historically. If you go back into the past, the U.S. has been one of the most annoying countries in history for third world countries. As for present day, well. Theres always parts of Africa who blaim the U.S. for the U.N.'s lack of activity, the Middle East has always hated us for some reason, the Cold War is still burning treasury coffers across the world, Europe hasn't liked us since the end of WWII, somethings always going on in South America with the U.S. getting blaimed for, Mexico just has economic issues with the U.S., and Native Americans haven't liked us since we first came here.
1. Auction site/Trading site/College bulletin board (take your pick)
2. Adverisement/Referal (its underground now, so expect to do some research to find it)
3. Paypal/bank/credit card (or equal, gotta have the money trail or its all hot air)
4. Connecting the auctioner's information with the buyer's and seller's WoW accounts. (Gotta know who to ban)
Take all this, web proxys, fake e-mail addresses, companies that are usually outside of the U.S., very little information, and the fact that you can't monitor this stuff in game (is XYZ players trading legit or did they buy it with real money?) makes this a very complicated business. Chances are the only reason why Blizzard is so successful right now is because its early, its fairly obvious and its learning from the mistakes of other games. Give it a few months and Blizzard is gonna start missing a lot of these guys or hitting the wrong people.